How to Think About Weird Things

Need help with your research? Contact:

Martha Stevenson
Reference Librarian
Phone: x3601
msteven@muhlenberg.edu

Reference Desk Hours:
Call or email to confirm
M 5-9 p.m.
T,Th 10 a.m.-12 p.m.
W,F 12-1 p.m.

Office hours (by appt.):
Call or email to arrange

Reference works

Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology (Ref. Collection 133 E56o or online through the library catalog)

The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal (Ref. Collection 133.03 S819e)

The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (Ref. Collection 503 S553s)

Books

The following resources can be found by visiting the Trexler Library Home Page - Find - Books,Videos,Music:

Trexler Library Catalog  
Catalog of all books and documents in Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College.

WorldCat
Catalog of books and documents in libraries throughout the world. Watch especially for the AREA LIBRARIES designation. Use E-ZBorrow for faster interlibrary loan.

E-ZBorrow
A catalog of books and documents in the libraries of PALCI, to which Muhlenberg College belongs. Submit interlibrary loan requests here for rapid delivery.

Periodical articles 

    Journal articles pertaining to this subject area can be accessed from home or campus by visiting the Trexler Library Home Page - Find - Articles A-Z.

general indexes with full text. . .

    Academic Search Premier
    A good starting place for journals, and includes the full text of about 4500 journals. Limit to "peer reviewed" to find only scholarly articles. Back issues of journals begin as early as 1980. Recent issues may not be included yet, due to publisher agreement. Journals held in Trexler Library are marked accordingly.

    LexisNexis Academic
    A news archive.

    JSTOR
    Archival full text database covering all disciplines.

    Omnifile (WilsonWeb)  
    Includes extensive full text, from both popular and scholarly periodicals.

subject-specialty indexes. . .

    General Science Index

    Philosopher's Index

    PsycInfo

getting to the full text. . .

    Once you have found the citation of a journal article you're interested in, click on the Get It link found next to the citation, or run a journal title search in Trexler Library's online catalog (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library).

articles via interlibrary loan. . .

Journal articles not found in Trexler Library can be ordered by following this path: Trexler Library Home Page - Services & Forms - ILL - Articles.

Web search engines, directories, and selected sites

Google (http://www.google.com)
Non-selective. One of the largest web crawlers.

Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)
A web crawler that looks for content it identifies as "scholarly." Emphasis is on books and journal articles. Intended as a "federated search" to search across disciplines (weighted toward sciences and social sciences). Not always full text. Do a journal title search in the library catalog to see if it is in full text or in paper.

Librarian's Index to the Internet  (http://lii.org/)
Highly selective search engine and directory of web resources.  Both scholarly and popular sites deemed important by a team of California-based public librarians. Entries are accompanied by paragraph-length descriptions.

Evaluating resources

Visit Trexler Library's Evaluating Resources (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/guides/evaluating.pdf) page.

Citing sources

    For tips on citing print and electronic sources, follow the path Trexler Library Home Page - Research Help - Citation Guides.